Future Employment - Internships

Once you've made a reasonable commitment to be a artist within the digital arts industry, a large part and parcel as the artist is to improve one's chances of attractiveness for future employment by providing a good generalist skillset and a outstanding specialist skillset.

One way to obtain further education into the requirements of the everyday working environment of a games company or a animation/post production studio is to apply for a Internship or Runner job. Apprentiships do NOT exist due to lack of feasible methods of accreditation.

The Intern

Those seeking to be a visual arts intern should have realistic expectations prior to applying.

Realistic in that, a internship is seen as a finishing period, to finely hone the skills, art theory and knowledge accumulated thus far prior to graduating into a full professional artist, in a ultra competitive creative industry.

//////// WHY HIRE AN INTERN ////////

As such, companies looking to hire interns are looking for talents with great potential to be their next junior artist, someone fully mouldable (without the baggage and trained instincts of a existing artist, who may not be the full package due to deficiencies in their prior art skillset) who is able to grow into a full professional artist within the parameters set by the respective companies.

//////// BASIC SKILLSET REQUIRED ////////

Realistic, also in the sense, one should not apply if you are not wholly equipped with the basic minimum understanding and application of

1/ Perspective & Form
2/ Lighting & Shadow
3/ Colour
4/ Principles & application of Industrial Design
5/ Anatomy & Motion


For it is with a good grounding of the 5 tenets of the visual arts above, that one can truly train and hone a future intern as your next new junior artist.

//////// REAL WORLD  CONSIDERATIONS ////////

Please try to remember , that within the visual arts industry - one has to focus the creative forces into deliverable real quantitised assets.  Often there will be live projects being undertaken within the studio environment, and sometimes there might not be much margin for error, such is the real working practice environment.

Thus it is not a place to dabble in art, to learn about the basics of art (without the preceding groundwork) or any tomfoolery about the finesse of various subtle strokes that only a connoisseur of abstract fine arts can appreciate.

If you are prepared, and have a good basic grounding in art - your portfolio will stand out a mile above the rest of the applicants such that the prospects of employment are considerably higher during the internship or thereafter.

End - part 1

Getting a foot in the proverbial door

• The Internship
• The Runner
• The Modder
• The Small to Big Approach